I’m an astronomer and astrophotographer based in Oxfordshire, UK with my wife Mary and our many cats. We met through Astronomy and share a passion for the subject which we try to pass on to everyone we can. We have a garden observatory, a second outdoor pier and several scopes of various sizes and makes as well as several meteor-spotting cameras fixed permanently on site and feeding data to UKMON Live . Sometimes Mary and I get competitive but mostly its fun being married to someone who’s as crazy about th
I first discovered my love of astronomy aged about nine, when my parents bought me a cheap 3″ refractor with a wooden tripod and fork mount. It had a built in barlow that promised magnificationsof 50-100x ! As if…. I promptly dismantled the scope to find out how it worked – and lost the barlow! Without it, the scope was of course useless so it got stuck in a cupboard and forgotten.
It wasn’t till i was 12 that it returned to it, by which time I’d lost the tube and tripod too. I found that I could attach the objective and focuser onto a bit of three inch drainpipe and by trial and error i found the right length. I then nailed the fork onto a fencepost – and with this monstrosity I first saw Saturn and its rings. And was hooked… I’ve since upgraded a bit. In the nineties I bought a 4.25″ newtonian from SCS Astro which went on holiday with us more than once. Family then ‘got in the way’